WWE Allowed Brock Lesnar To Bleed At WrestleMania 31

By John Canton / April 1, 2015

Update: WWE issued a statement to deny Lesnar bladed. Read more here. The main event of WrestleMania featured something that we don't see very often in WWE anymore: Blood. Lots of it too. Brock Lesnar dominated much of the match and he sent Reigns off the apron all the way to the floor. Referee Mike Chioda left the ring, went to check on Reigns outside the ring and then put something in his hand. A referee usually doesn't go outside the ring in that situation, but it happens sometimes. Here's a look at what happened: http://i.imgur.com/eGn8ywO.gif Did WWE allow Lesnar to blade during the match? It looks like they did. The GIF above doesn't lie. Lesnar was alone in the ring and veteran official Mike Chioda clearly placed something in Roman's head. This was in the earlier stages of the match. We're guessing WWE didn't want that on camera. Oops. Lesnar bled from his cheek, which was a natural cut opened up and also from his mouth after a hard knee that Reigns delivered, but the cut from the head was definitely from a blade. What most likely happened is Reigns hid the blade in his gear since he wears a vest as well as pants, so it could have been easy for him to hid it. Towards the end of the match, Lesnar tossed Reigns outside the ring. He looked like he was going to drive Reigns into the post, but instead it was Reigns who shoved Lesnar. When Lesnar went into the post, he held up hand to block it so he probably had the blade in the hand because as soon as be bounced back you could see the nasty gash on his head.

If you want to see the spot for yourself, go to the 3:50:11 mark in the WrestleMania broadcast and you'll see it. The reason this is considered newsworthy is that WWE has banned intentional blade for over five years now. When they went PG in 2008 they really cut back on it, but there were some occasions after it where they still had people bleed. Chris Jericho was in a cage match with Batista and he claims in his book that was when they officially banned what is commonly referred to as blading. Batista was fined for it, so were others involved in the match and Batista paid everybody's fine because he was the one that wanted to do it. Why do the blood in the match? It makes Lesnar look vulnerable. That's when the tide turned in the match with Reigns getting on offense and nearly winning after multiple Superman Punches and the Spear. It's what WWE would have done in the past to add to the story and did many times over the years, but we never see it anymore. It's an aspect of the business that used to be common, but no longer happens partly because of the health of the wrestlers and also the PG nature of WWE means that they don't want their stars bleeding because that's not something parents want their kids to see. Give credit to WWE for making it look good because it added to the match. However, they're probably not happy that it was shown on camera.